The loathing of Tony Blair by the Left is not helped by his rising stock elsewhere. To those of us who voted for both Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair, he has not disappointed. I regard it as in Blair’s favour that he is considered employable out of office and am pleased to hear from a former colleague of his that he is pouring £10 million in tax into the Treasury coffers. It is not a bad thing that he is providing employment to hundreds of young people nor that he invests much of his money and time in charitable causes. Here is a man who is wealthy and at ease, unlike his country.

As for Iraq, this is the week of the great surge from commentators, battalions of “I-told-you-sos”. Without wishing to follow Julie Burchill out on society’s limb, how do we know? There were ghastly errors following the quick and decisive invasion of Iraq. The military operation was a resounding success. The post-operative care was disgracefully negligent. We have learned that it is far easier to go in than to get out.

I remember a doctor in Basra telling me three years after the war that he was tired of democracy without stability or electricity. Seven years later, is it better or worse? This has to be the fairest way of making Blair accountable for his actions. For years, it looked worse, for violence and chaos can be as ugly as tyranny.

Now, economically Iraq looks more promising. It has become one of the fastest-growing economies in the world. Its oil revenues exceed Iran’s.

It occurs to me that all those who say I told you so have not waited for the end of the story. We have paid a horrific price in casualties, but history may still judge the decision to be correct.

Remember the wisdom of Lee Kuan Yew, the Singapore leader who shocked Americans by questioning their narrative of the Vietnam war. He said that it depended on the measurement. Americans may have regarded it as a catastrophe but it in the end it saved Asia. The growing prosperity of South-East Asia, now so courted by President Obama, could not have happened if communism had not been halted there by the Americans.

Bush and Blair busted the Arab order, and we don’t yet know what the consequences are, good or bad. The fate of Iraq is still unknown. It was predictable when Saddam Hussein was in charge, because he had a monopoly on violence. We now have what Douglas Hurd once described in another context as a level killing field. It is volatile and the sacrifice has been great, but we should not rule out hope, simply in order to punish Tony Blair.

Attenborough, sonorous voice of our conscience

The other evening, I went to watch David Attenborough open the exhibition Extinction at the Natural History Museum. Speaking just before Attenborough, the Environment Secretary Owen Paterson gave a post-horse, pre-donkey talk on responsibility and nature husbandry. Perfectly respectable, as dry as dust.

Then Attenborough rose to the podium and his absurdly famous hushed and sonorous voice filled the museum. He told Kipling-style stories about tortoises and exotic frogs and the eyes of assembled guests glistened. Here was the point, Attenborough said. We humans have to decide how to treat those with whom we share the planet. “If the natural world is destroyed, we destroy ourselves.”

Somehow, the food scandal feels part of a larger dislocation from the natural order. Cameron is busy summoning his ministers to deal with the crisis but a word from Attenborough would silence and shame us all, supermarkets, dodgy suppliers and, above all, consumers.

To keep up with the Chinese we must invest in the arts

Last weekend, I was in Milan and went to La Scala, to pay tribute to the finest of Italian culture. The opera was Verdi and the baritone was Leo Nucci. So naturally the audience was heavily represented by the Chinese.

The next day I watched a service at the Duomo and again it was the Chinese who swelled the numbers. Where there is high culture or good taste in wines or fashion, the Chinese are there.

Which is why Education Secretary Michael Gove had to back down on his plan to downgrade art, drama and music in schools.

This Government is fond of talking of the global race but if we are to take on the Chinese in culture and, above all, education we need to take the arts seriously.

The world’s new superpower is notable for discarding the trashy and the transient and going for what lasts. The Chinese want land for when the world’s food supplies run dry. And they want Verdi.